Retrofit shows you can go green, and stylishly
Bill Eggertson has sinned. The head of the Canadian Association for Renewable Energies has scored a jawdropping 90 on the EnerGuide Rating System, the federal government’s yardstick for measuring energy efficiency, by retrofitting his handsome quarter-centuryold house in the Ottawa-area countryside, which he and his wife bought in 2006.
That score trounces the 80 mandated for new homes under Ontario’s building code. It outstrips the 86 for an R-2000 home, which outperforms the building code. And it makes it one of the 39 most energy-efficient retrofits officially recorded in the country.
Eggertson’s home is sealed tighter than Superman’s pants thanks to krypton-filled, triple-pane windows and extra insulation. It boasts ultra-low-flow toilets, a geothermal heating and cooling system that Eggertson designed to replace a propane furnace and other energy and resource misers.
Better yet, its roof sprouts 50-odd solar panels, generating electricity for the grid under an Ontario energy program. It’s got a small wind turbine with more coming in the spring and extra solar panels for backyard water fountains.
But — and here’s where Eggertson’s skating on thin eco-ice — his kitchen sports gorgeous granite countertops. So what, you ask? Well, the granite is Brazilian, requiring fossil fuels to get it here.
“It’s our eco-sin,” the gregarious Eggertson says with a slightly self-conscious laugh.
“I should probably be rapped over the knuckles for it.” But, he adds quickly, it’s the “highest-density granite” and will last for years.
Says his wife, Marian Johns, who insisted on the granite: “We all live with our inconsistencies.”
We also like to live in attractive, comfortable surroundings. And that green granite, which echoes the colour of the weedy Jock River tributary flowing past the couple’s home, is one of many elements that make this house not just an energy skinflint, but also esthetically appealing — one of Eggertson’s goals in upgrading.
Basically well built by the carpenter who previously owned it — he did things like doubling the thickness of exterior walls for increased insulation — the house still needed work when Eggertson and his wife moved there, seeking the peace and quiet of the countryside.
They shifted the kitchen from a gloomy north-facing location to the east so morning sun could spill into the room, which is done in gleaming white cabinetry.
Rich teak flooring replaced carpeting everywhere but the sprawling television and fitness room. The wood is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as having been sustainably produced; Eggertson, never one to turn down a bargain, found it priced right at Home Depot.
Interior walls were opened for better air flow and more light and glazing was increased.
“When you live in the country, you want to look outside,” Eggertson says. A glance outside shows dozens of fruit, evergreen and other trees planted by Johns and, pecking around the bird feeders, plump chickadees and blue jays.
The house faces directly south so that the living room, with its large, deepset windows, is awash in sunlight. “It’s lined up so perfectly it’s like a sundial,” Eggertson says, referring to a shadow cast on the floor by a window divider.
“I’d say right now it’s, mmm, 10:30. It’s 10:45. Not bad,” he says.
Thanks to those highefficiency windows, there’s little solar gain on sunny summer days. Although that means not much gain in the winter when you’d welcome it, there’s also little heat loss at night.
At 3,500 square feet, it’s a big house. “It’s larger than we need, no argument,” he says, “but, hey, we like it and we’ve tried to make it better with energy efficiency.”
Building a new home to such standards is easy, he says. Retrofitting a home is another kettle of fish.
And while he’s realistic about how far the average homeowner might be willing to go — “It’s personal choice. You do whatever you can” — he also notes that “there’s no time for baby steps. We’re crapping out the planet. It’s important that people understand it can be done.”
And done with style.